Face Down
by Red River
Summary: Sasuke left. Where did that leave his apartment? Where did it leave them? A brief mission for Sakura and Naruto, shortly after Sasuke's departure. Pre-time skip. One-shot, Sakura's POV. No pairings.


A/N: Of all the things I never thought I would write, a one-shot from Sakura's point of view is pretty near the top of the list, seeing as how I really had no use for her in the series. Still, that's the perspective this story chose, and I've done what I can to keep her in character. This story is set after Sasuke's departure, pre-time skip, and centered on something that occurred to me for the first time the other day: what happened to Sasuke's apartment after he left? Please enjoy.

Warnings: None.

Pairing: None really. One-sided Sakura/Sasuke, as per canon, and friendship all around.

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Sakura could never before remember being intimidated by a door.

She was a grown ninja—well, half grown, at least. She was safe in Konoha, though the hallway was unfamiliar to her and the silence behind all the other doors stretching to either side of her made her feel as though she were miles away from everyone else in the world, as though neither a scream nor a whimper, should she feel the need for either, would reach the ears of another living person. Here she was isolated right in the middle of the city, cut off from the life that was brimming in the streets she had traveled to reach this place, in the streets that ringed the apartment building. She couldn't even hear herself breathing.

She wondered if he had liked that. The silence.

Sakura exhaled slowly and stepped toward the door again, tightening her grip on the bundle of wet rags that drooped from one clenched fist. This was so silly. She knew that. There was no reason to hesitate now, when she'd already come all this way. There was nothing to intrude on here—not anymore.

It wasn't that. There was just something wrong with the door. Every time she touched the knob, her hand started to shake.

Sakura pulled her fingers back to her side and leaned forward, resting her forehead against the cold wood. Tsunade had guessed this, she thought—this last-minute weakness on her part. She'd known it would be hard. But she wasn't supposed to lose it before she even got inside.

"_They're asking that someone clean out his apartment." The Hokage tossed the request scroll down on her desk, watching her pupil with eyes that were almost as piercing as they were wise. "The landlord doesn't want to hold a room for him, after everything—that, and his rent is up. I thought you'd want to know, but you don't have to take this mission, Sakura. Anyone could do it."_

"_No!" Sakura reined her voice back and took a deep breath, steadying herself in front of her master. "No, I'll do it. He wouldn't—he wouldn't like just anyone going through his things. Please. I'll handle Sasuke-kun's—Sasuke's apartment."_

_Sasuke. She was going to call him Sasuke, now that… now._

_Tsunade leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers under her chin. "If you're sure," was all she said, and Sakura nodded as hard as she could, as hard as she allowed herself. She nodded and tried not to think too hard about having to ask directions. Then she left Tsunade to her business and set out on her mission, all too aware of the measuring stare that followed her to the door._

That door, the door of the most powerful ninja in Konoha, she opened every day without a second thought. This one she could barely touch. Sakura turned her head to one side, the door numbers just a golden blur in eyes that were quickly losing their composure.

Thirty-three. Why hadn't she known that Sasuke lived in apartment thirty-three? Why hadn't she known Sasuke lived in an apartment?

Footsteps pounded up the stairs behind her, and Sakura turned with a start, the tears wavering in her eyes at the sudden motion and the surprise that inspired it. She was even more surprised when a familiar blue-eyed blond appeared at the top of the stairwell, panting a little as he raced down the hallway in her direction.

"Sakura-chan! You didn't start yet, right?"

Sakura hurried to blink the tears from her eyes, staring at her teammate—former teammate—as he skidded to a stop at her side. "Naruto? What are you doing here? Aren't you and Jiraiya—"

"We were leaving—getting ready to leave. Then we dropped in to say bye to that old lady, and she said you were here…" Naruto threw off the last of his exertion and straightened in his stance, smiling under eyes too bright for the dim hallway around them. "I'm here to help."

"Oh, I—you didn't have to—" Sakura tried, more glad than she would have admitted when Naruto took the landlord's spare key from her hand and unlocked the door, conquering in her place the barrier of angry silence that had held her back so long. Naruto shrugged her protest away, leading the way into the cold, dusty air of the soundless apartment.

"I want to help. That old pervert's waiting, but he won't wait forever. Let's get going."

With that and another smile, Naruto disappeared into the darkness, and though Sakura tried to follow him she found herself frozen in the doorway, immobilized once more at the point of intruding on this… this sanctuary. This broken sanctuary that wasn't enough for him. One of so many things that hadn't been enough.

"Where's the stupid light switch—ah!"

With the exclamation of victory came the lights, finally, and the infinite darkness before her was transformed into a room, a small sequence of rooms, so barren of decoration or personal effect that the sight of them made her want to step back into the hallway, because even that was more inviting. But with the lights on she could see Naruto, looking around with his hands on his hips, and his determination gave her courage, enough at least to step inside and close the door behind her.

Naruto turned to look at her, smiling in spite of his words. "That bastard. Never even told me he lived here, and I only live four blocks away."

Sakura swallowed hard, trying not to clench her hands around the rags. "He didn't… you've never been here either?"

Naruto laughed, and she wondered if it was forced but couldn't tell. "Nope. Not once. Sasuke's a jerk like that, though."

_Sasuke is._ Not _Sasuke was_. Sakura wanted to smile back at him—to smile at the easy way he spoke of a friend who wasn't a friend any longer, who had kept, through all their years of teamwork, such a tangible part of his life hidden from them. From Naruto, his best friend. From her. She wanted to smile but she couldn't. Her thoughts had made the air so cold.

"Okay. Let's get going!" Naruto said, scattering to the other side of the small kitchen and opening Sasuke's cabinets one after the other. "Huh. Nothing but canned peas, canned tuna, canned beets—maybe that's why Sasuke's always in a bad mood. Nothing good to eat."

Sakura couldn't watch him forever. She left a wet rag, for the countertops and the stove, on the table beside him. Then she moved toward the bedroom—the only other room, really, in the apartment—and stopped again, staring at the sparse furniture. A desk. A dresser. A bed under dark blue bedspread. There was nothing in this room to show that it was Sasuke's, to mark it as his space.

Maybe there had been and he had taken it with him. But Sakura had a feeling in her bones that the only thing that had ever marked this room as Sasuke's was Sasuke himself, and there was no hope of finding him here.

"Hey, Sakura-chan?"

Sakura jumped a little at the voice, too lost in thought to hear her teammate's approach. Naruto blinked as she turned to face him, holding up a saucepan in one waiting hand.

"What're we doing with all this stuff, anyway?" he asked, nodding back toward the kitchen.

Sakura bit her lit. "We'll just throw the food away. The rest of it…" Sakura wanted to keep her head high, but she couldn't, staring at the floor as her cleaning rag turned cold around her fingers. "Tsunade said—the landlord said we should get rid of it. So I guess we'll take it to the… to the dump." Sakura squeezed her eyes shut. "Or we can burn it," she added in a whisper, a whisper that echoed too well against the barren walls, as though the room were listening, too.

Burn it. Just as Sasuke had burned his ties to Konoha. He couldn't expect better—couldn't have expected better. So why did it make her ache so much to say it?

"That's such a waste!" Sakura looked up at Naruto's impassioned voice, and at the warm hand that had taken her wrist, tugging her back toward the kitchen. "Come on, Sakura-chan. Let's see if there's anything worth keeping, before we throw it all out."

Sakura choked a little, pulling her hand free of Naruto's and halting them both with that one motion. "This isn't a garage sale, Naruto!" she snapped, angry for reasons she knew but couldn't define. "These are Sasuke-kun's things!"

Sasuke-kun. No. She was going to call him Sasuke now. It was the only thing to call him.

Naruto blinked at her. "I know. But he's not using them right now—and it's such a waste to throw them all away. He won't mind, Sakura-chan. Don't worry. When he comes home, I'll give it all back, if he wants it."

He didn't mind. Naruto didn't mind the thought of using Sasuke's things, of holding onto the belongings of the person who had left him, left all of it. Sakura didn't know how he could stand it, how it didn't kill him to sort through the pans and dishes of the friend who had betrayed him, how he found it in himself to set aside a few pots for his own use as they heaped the rest of it into one corner by the door. How he was still smiling, still talking, as they turned to start on the bedroom.

Sakura hesitated again at the invisible boundary between the two rooms. Naruto did not. He moved straight through it and paused only at the edge of the bed, looking around with a low whistle.

"Geez. Not much in here, huh?"

"Guess that makes our job easier," Sakura replied, the closest she had come to a smile crossing her face as she stepped in his footprints and entered the room. "Look under the bed, okay? I'll take the dresser."

"All right! All of Sasuke's secret stuff's got to be under here. Let's see what we've got…"

Sakura shook her head but didn't reprimand him. It didn't matter—Sasuke wouldn't have left anything worth hiding behind when he left. And if he had… what meaning was there to protecting it now? It didn't mean enough to him to take it along—didn't mean enough to stay.

She moved to the dresser and opened the first drawer, looking down in surprise at three rows of socks. Socks. She didn't remember Sasuke ever wearing socks. They looked completely unused to her, lined up so stiff and impersonal in their perfect lines. They reminded her of the forks and knives, the chopsticks in the kitchen drawer. There was nothing of Sasuke in them—they were just normal things, things anyone would use. But he wouldn't, anymore.

"Man. All I've got is some weapons." Sakura pulled all the socks into her arms and crossed the room toward their discard pile, stopping behind Naruto to look down at the polished kunai and shuriken that lined the case he had opened, their edges sharp and solemn even in the light. About half were missing, it looked like. Gone with their master to a darker place.

Naruto scratched his head. "We can't throw these away. Let's split them, huh, Sakura-chan? They're in really good condition…"

But he stopped as he lifted one out of its place, because now they could both see the Uchiha symbol etched into the metal, glaring back at them in crisp reflection. Sakura held the socks a little tighter in her arms. Naruto lost his forehead to thoughtful lines. Then he put it back, closing the case with two firm hands.

"Ah, forget it. We'll just save these for him."

"Okay," Sakura found herself saying, as Naruto followed her the rest of the way across the room and laid the box of weapons next to his pans. Sakura wondered, as they returned to work, which of them would be holding onto those weapons until they could be returned to their proper owner, and then she wished she wanted it to be her.

"So under the bed's a bust. This is a nice blanket, though," Naruto said, flopping back onto Sasuke's bed and kicking his feet. "I'm definitely taking this. I don't have a winter blanket, anyway."

Sakura glanced back at him over her shoulder, studying his unbothered eyes with her own reluctant ones. Sleeping under the blanket Sasuke had slept under. She wanted to want that. But she didn't. She felt like she would never get to sleep under that midnight fabric.

She turned back to the second drawer, and then wished she hadn't. It was full of shirts—all the same shirt, the Uchiha crests lined up proudly in the drawer, with a few black long-sleeved shirts tucked into its corner. Sakura picked one up and held it to her face, pressing her eyes into the symbol she had seen so many times, every time Sasuke turned his back and walked away from her. She wanted it to smell like Sasuke but it didn't—it didn't smell like anything, too long separated from its master to retain any hint of him. It could have been anyone's shirt, except that it wasn't—it was Sasuke's shirt and no one would ever wear it but him, and maybe he'd never wear it again.

These had to go.

"Wait, Sakura-chan—don't get rid of all of them."

Sakura paused a step short of their trash pile, turning back to Naruto with all the shirts tangled up in her arms. Naruto sat up on the bed and scratched one ankle against the other, messy hair falling into his eyes.

"We should keep one. In case he comes back and doesn't have anything to wear."

"Naruto…" Sakura held the shirts as tightly as she could—but still they smelled like nothing, nothing but dust and silence. They had been abandoned, too. "By the time he… none of this will fit him anymore."

Her voice was wavering. God, she wasn't strong enough for this. For any of it. How was she supposed to handle this—how was she supposed to touch these things without remembering it all, the betrayal and the absence, in everything he had left behind? How was she supposed to do this without feeling like just another thing he had thrown away? Who would be strong enough to do this without wavering?

Naruto, of course. "Well, maybe not," he said, thinking over her words. "But we should save one anyway. He might want it." Sakura was staring at him and Naruto blinked back at her, his smile fighting to encourage her own as he pulled back the blanket and set to stripping the bed. "Don't worry, Sakura-chan. He can borrow some of my clothes, if he needs them."

The image of Sasuke dressed in bright orange, bright orange that was a few inches short at the wrist and the ankle, did make her smile—more than smile, it drew a little laugh from her lips, faltering but pure as she shook her head. "Oh, Naruto. Your clothes wouldn't fit him either. You're shorter than he is."

Naruto pouted at that, slinging the sheets into the pile of trash. "Yeah, now maybe. Just watch—someday I'll be a whole head taller than Sasuke. Then you'll see."

He wouldn't be. He never would. But his confidence made her laugh again, and Naruto grinned to hear her laugh—and suddenly the room seemed less hostile to her, as though the walls were curious about this new sound, as though they had never heard laughter before. Maybe they never had, Sakura reflected, as she finished with Sasuke's dresser and turned toward his desk. Had Sasuke ever sat here alone, laughing by himself? She couldn't imagine that. God, she couldn't even remember what Sasuke's laugh sounded like. Had she ever heard it in the first place?

"I'll take the bathroom!" Naruto volunteered, disappearing behind her into the only other door in the apartment. Sakura barely heard him. She was transfixed by the kaleidoscope of images in her head, all the faces, all the memories she could summon of the boy she had chased for so long she hardly knew where to go now, now that she couldn't follow him. She remembered so much of Sasuke—had stolen so many moments for the vaults of her mind—but she couldn't remember him laughing. Not once. Had he ever laughed at all?

Naruto would know. She could ask, when he came back.

"He remembered to take his toothbrush!" Naruto called, an edge of surprise or maybe something else hanging in his voice. "I never remember my toothbrush."

Sakura shook her head at the bare walls, dismissing her thoughts as she moved toward the desk—two drawers, that was all, except… "You never remember anything, Naruto. No matter how many times Kakashi tells you, you don't bring anything useful on missions." Except what was this, lying face down on the empty surface?

"That's mean, Sakura-chan."

Sakura reached out a hand and picked it up—then her fingers turned to ice and her breath came up short in her lungs, caught in the web that hurt and surprise had been weaving across her throat strand by strand. Younger and happier—they must have been happier—Team 7 looked back at her out of the glass, even their bright clothes dimmed by the suffocating silence.

Their team picture. A perfect reflection of hers, steady on her vanity—of Naruto's, posed on his bedside table. Of the copy Kakashi always seemed to have on hand, when he needed it. Face down on the desk.

He hadn't even taken it with him.

"Well, not much in here—Sakura-chan?"

Naruto's voice preceded him into the room, followed by curious, cautious footsteps. Sakura didn't turn around. She didn't want him to see the tears she had lost control of. If he saw, he would try to cheer her up, and she didn't want that. She wanted to cry. She had a right to cry.

"Sakura-chan? What's wrong?"

Sakura shook her head. It wasn't the only part of her that was shaking. "His picture, Naruto. His picture of us—of all of us. He left it here, face down. Like he didn't want to look at us. Like we were dead!"

God, when had her voice gotten so raw? Sakura wanted to have it under control but she didn't—she didn't have anything under control. It was wrong—it was all so wrong. She shouldn't be here, looking through these things. No one should. No one but Sasuke.

"He left it, Naruto. Left it like it meant nothing to him. Like he left us. Us, this—all this time together. Sasuke-kun… Sasuke-kun, he—"

Sasuke-kun. He would always be Sasuke-kun to her. There was nothing else for him to be.

"Sakura-chan…"

"He doesn't even care!" Sakura cried, and against her will she found that she had turned toward Naruto, clutching the picture against her chest. "He abandoned us, all this, and he doesn't care. About us—about you—" _About me_, she wanted to say, but she couldn't. Her throat had closed up, open to nothing but sobs now.

Naruto wasn't moving, wasn't answering—what kind of comfort was this supposed to be? Maybe he had nothing to say. What could he say? He had been abandoned just like she had. Sasuke had left him, too. Sasuke didn't care about him, either.

"That's not true, Sakura-chan."

Sakura looked up at him, through the film of tears that she couldn't shake—and he was smiling at her, why was he always smiling, why did this make him want to smile? Naruto shook his head.

"If he didn't care, he wouldn't have kept it at all."

Sakura stared at him, at the smile she couldn't shake, as her teammate—her friend—reached out as though to brush the back of the picture. He let his hand fall back before he touched it, impeded by distance or her shaking arms, she didn't know.

"He does care, Sakura-chan. That's why he had to put it down. He didn't know how to explain it to us—he didn't know how to say goodbye. That's all."

His eyes were clear. Why was she the one crying, when he had chased Sasuke to the Valley of the End and had the life beaten from him by the hands of a friend, hands that he was still defending? Why was he still smiling?

"He just forgot, Sakura-chan," Naruto said, rubbing the back of his neck. "He forgot that he cares. I'm gonna remind him. Then he'll come back. So don't cry, okay?"

It hurt, though—it still hurt. She wanted to say that but she didn't, just held the picture so tight that the corners of the frame dug into her arms, sharp enough to help with the shaking but not sharp enough to stop it. Naruto was smiling at her so she smiled back, but her cheeks were stiff with the remnants of her tears and she knew it couldn't have been a pretty smile, no prettier than the piles of abandoned things building up behind them, than the dust and the silence that had been building up here even longer. It wasn't pretty but it was all she could give him—well, almost.

"Here, Naruto." Her fingers were trembling. They didn't want to let go of the picture, of this proof, in Naruto's mind, of an attachment even Sasuke couldn't break—but she held it out to him anyway, looking at their younger faces instead of the hopeful face right across from hers. "You should keep this. For Sasuke-kun."

Naruto was studying her; she could tell without looking up, without meeting his eyes. She didn't think she could look up. She didn't think she could, until he laughed, lifting her red eyes to his sheepish smile and the hand mussing his golden hair.

"Nah. I think you better hang onto that one, Sakura-chan. Things kind of go missing sometimes in my apartment, and… well, Sasuke's really going to want that one back."

It was a lie, or a truth he'd been fighting. Sakura remembered all the times he'd persisted that he could find anything in his cluttered home, that nothing went missing for long under the folds of scrolls and laundry. She didn't call him on it. She just pressed the picture back to her chest and wrapped her arms around it and thought of Sasuke, keeping it close the way she couldn't keep him, the way he wouldn't be kept. Sakura nodded and Naruto smiled, the way he'd been smiling, the way he always smiled, slinging his arms back behind his head and gazing over Konoha out of Sasuke's window.

"Yep. Just hang onto that one, until he wants it back."

Sakura ducked her chin and rested her forehead against the wood of the picture frame, against the wood that maybe, she thought, might have been the last thing in this room to receive his goodbye. She closed her eyes, listening to her heartbeat and the rhythm of their breathing as it overcame the silence, as the dust settled and left them there, the first visitors to a room that didn't remember laughter. Maybe Sasuke didn't remember laughter, either.

She wanted to cry but she wouldn't, because it wasn't too late. Not yet. Naruto was going to bring him back—he had promised. Naruto was going to remind him. Maybe she could remind him, too.


End file.
